Quotes about most
page 36

“I was told once that the most important part of a fight is making sure your opponent looks worse than you do when you’re through.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: A Night Like This

Fight, Parting

“When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

Source: Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic

World, Understanding

“The two important things that I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavour is taking the first step, making the first decision.”

Robyn Davidson (1950) Australian writer

Source: Tracks

Decision, Strong, Learning, Parting

“A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: Ideology: An Introduction

People

“If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. You memories will be my most lasting impressions.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Memory

“A soulmate is the person who makes your sould grow the most.”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Personality

“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

First published in the "Roger Ebert's Journal" column (19 May 2010) http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/cannes-7-a-campaign-for-real-movies

“You rely too much on brain. The brain is the most overrated organ.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

“The most irritating thing about cliches, I decided, was how frequently they were true.”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

“The arrangements that couples make in order to maintain civility in the midst of their journey to divorce are often most elaborate when the professed top priority is to protect a child.”

John Irving (1942) American novelist and screenwriter

“Happyish. Well, happyish isn't so bad.'
'It's the most we can hope for.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Hope

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. … I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Life, Music, Thinking, Joy

“Here's what I think: the five most
unattractive traits in people are cheapness, clinginess, neediness, unwillingness to change and
jealousy. Jealousy is the worst, and by far the hardest to conceal.”

Douglas Coupland Hey Nostradamus!

Source: Hey Nostradamus!

People, Jealousy, Thinking, Change

“The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea (1955), Ch. 2; part of this statement has often been paraphrased: "The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere."
Context: I find I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.

Life

“That’s the thing about spies. Most of the secrets we keep are from each other.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

Secret

“Don't worry, Mrs. Colder. For the most part, we keep him leashed and gagged. We only let him free when the cute little animal jokes are needed.

~Sherra Callahan (on Kane Tyler)~”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

Source: Elizabeth's Wolf

Animals, Parting

“He wondered whether growing up was learning that most stories turned out to be lies.”

Holly Black book Doll Bones

Source: Doll Bones

Learning

“Regrets are the most useless form of guilt. They always arrive too late to do any good.”

Eileen Wilks Tempting Danger

Source: Tempting Danger

“The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

“A woman's mind is her most precious weapon. It must not be employed clumsily or prematurely. Much like the aforementioned knife in the back, a clever gibe is most effective when it is unanticipated.”

Brandon Sanderson book The Way of Kings

Source: The Way of Kings

“The most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on in front of me.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

Education, Thinking

“He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and every body hoped that he would never come there again.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

World, Hope

“Jason once told me that eye contact is the most intimacy two people can have -- forget sex -- because the optic nerve is technically an extension of the brain, and when two people look into each other's eyes, it's brain-to-brain.”

Douglas Coupland Hey Nostradamus!

Source: Hey Nostradamus!

People, Sex, Forgetting

“What you want most you push away from you.
You want more than you care to admit.”

Tarjei Vesaas (1897–1970) Norwegian poet

Source: The Bridges

“When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War, Volume II : Their Finest Hour (1949) Chapter 8 (September Tensions).
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Life, Deep, Happy

“Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Friendship, Pleasure, Friendship, For Friend

“Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

“To love someone means that you sometimes are fulfilled the most by putting thier deepest desires above your own.”

Terry Goodkind book Confessor

Source: Confessor

Love

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Beauty, Art, Science, Dead

“Syn has a brain disorder that causes him to lie most of the time. Ignore him. (Nykyrian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Lie, Time

“… mediocre people find their way into positions of authority… because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think.”

Malcolm Gladwell book Blink

Source: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

People, Way, Thinking, Decision

“"You know, most psychologists agree that hostility is really just sublimated sexual attraction."
"Ah, that might explain why I so often run into people who seem to dislike me."”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Clary and Jace, pg. 331
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Hostility, People

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

"Variations on a Philosopher" in Themes and Variations (1950)
Source: Brave New World

“You'll use it [Perrin's axe], boy, and as long as you hate using it, you would use it more wisely than most men would. Wait. If ever you don't hate it any longer, then will be the time to throw it as far as you can and run the other way.”

Robert Jordan book The Eye of the World

Elyas Machera
(15 January 1990)
Source: The Eye of the World

Men, Hate, Way, Boy

“Man staggers through life yapped at by his reason, pulled and shoved by his appetites, whispered to by fears, beckoned by hopes. Small wonder that what he craves most is self-forgetting.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Life, Fear, Hope, Forgetting

“But love may have to be left off the exam. Most of us will never learn.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Love, Learning

“So, using his pride like a shield against despair, dejection, and-most important—
self-pity, Raoden raised his head to stare damnation in the eyes.”

Brandon Sanderson Elantris

Source: Elantris

Despair

“Anger is the most useless emotion," Henchick intoned, "destructive to the mind and hurtful to the heart.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

Source: Song of Susannah

Heart, Hurt, Anger

“People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It's easy. Most people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until an opening exists. And who can resist an opening?”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

People, Question

“The most beautiful world is always entered through imagination.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

World, Beauty, Imagination

“Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

People, Stupidity, Nature

“Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

“You must make, always. You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you're going to paint. The most terrible bad form.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Painting

“The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Truth, Idea, Understanding

“There’s Socialism and Communism and Capitalism and there’s Feminism and Hedonism, and there’s Catholicism and Bipedalism and Consumerism, but I think Narcissism is the system that means the most to me.”

Tony Hoagland (1953–2018) American writer

Communication, Thinking

“In spite of the seven thousand books of expert advice, the right way to disciplne a child is still a mystery to most fathers and… mothers Only your grandmother and Genghis Khan know how to do it.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Books, Way

“Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

“We should be inspired by people… who show that human beings can be kind, brave, generous, beautiful, strong-even in the most difficult circumstances.”

Rachel Corrie (1979–2003) American anti-war and human rights activist

People, Beauty, Strong

“Isn’t the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language — the amorous language? No more ‘I love you’s.”

Roland Barthes book A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Source: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Love

“Enemies are nothing compared to traitors, after all. It's the people you hold closest who have the most power to make you bleed.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

People

“I think that most people would rather face the light of a real enemy than the darkness of their imagined fears.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

People, Fear, Imagination, Thinking

“Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.”

Philip Yancey (1949) American writer

Source: Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud

Love

“A smile remains the most inexpensive gift I can bestow on anyone and yet its powers can vanquish kingdoms.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Smile, Cute

“I can always tell when you're thinking about food. You forget to be the Serious Wolf and you get this dreamy look in your eyes. You know, most people would think you were thinking about a girl. They have no idea that her name is bacon.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Stars

People, Food, Girl, Idea

“Bright star,” Magnus said, and his eyes were thoughtful, as if he were remembering something, or someone. “Those of you who are mortal, you burn so fiercely. And you fiercer than most, Will. I will not ever forget you.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Star, Forgetting

“I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted.”

Elmore Leonard book LaBrava

Source: LaBrava

“Well, most grown-ups forget what it was like to be a kid. I vowed that I would never forget.”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

Forgetting

“Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk

Democracy, Soul

“A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 6; translated by Luigi Ricci

Men

“one of the good things about being a woman is that my level of testosterone poisoning is lower than most men's.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Obsidian Butterfly

Source: Obsidian Butterfly

Men

“Any simpleton can speak with confidence. Sometimes the greatest fools have the most bravado.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Keys to the Demon Prison

Fools, Confidence

“She is my first and only love. Most people know that their first love will not be their only love. But for me, she is both.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, People

“Remember, 'No one's more important than people'! In other words, friendship is the most important thing--not career or housework, or one's fatigue--and it needs to be tended and nurtured.”

Julia Child My Life in France

Source: My Life in France

Friendship, People

“I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding.”

Jean Webster book Daddy-Long-Legs

Source: Daddy-Long-Legs

People, Imagination, Understanding, Thinking

“Rest. Heal. Sleep. I shall most likely kill you on the morrow.”

“You? A Princess Bride quote?” I croaked.

“What is that?” she asked.”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

Quotes, Sleep, Princess

“Of all sound of all bells… most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

“So you interrupted my date to make fun of me for still living with my parents. Couldn't you have done that on a night I didn't have a date? That's most nights, in case you're curious.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Parent, Night

“The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

God, Behavior

“To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”

Jane Austen book Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park (1814)
Works, Mansfiled Park
Context: "I shall soon be rested," said Fanny; "to sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment."

Perfection, Beauty, Peaceful

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

As quoted in "Doom and glory of knowing who you are" by Jane Howard, in LIFE magazine, Vol. 54, No. 21 (24 May 1963), p. 89 https://books.google.com/books?id=mEkEAAAAMBAJ; a part of this statement has often been quoted as it was paraphrased in The New York Times (1 June 1964): <br class="br">Context: You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else can tell, what it is like to be alive.

Pain, People, World, History

“If there were a map of the solar system, but instead of stars it showed people and their degrees of separation, my star would be the one you had to travel the most light-years from to get to his. You would die getting to him.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

People, Travel, Star, Light

“Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable.”

Jon Krakauer (1954) American outdoors writer and journalist

Source: Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster

Imagination, Mountain

“I tried to look confused, which is one of my most convincing expressions.”

Rick Riordan book The Crown of Ptolemy

Source: The Crown of Ptolemy

“A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.”

Pam Brown (1948) Australian poet

Friendship, Weather

“The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Question, Thinking

“Most people worth knowing enjoy reading.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Grip of the Shadow Plague

People, Reading

“Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Time

“Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination-- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues -- which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Family, Imagination, Loyalty

“The most educated person in the world now has to admit-- I shall not say confess-- that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

World, Education, Personality

“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Family, Home, Family

“In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

People, World, Imagination

“The inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race.”

Salman Rushdie book Shalimar the Clown

Source: Shalimar the Clown

Truth, History, Reality

“My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Variant: My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known; what wonder, then, that I love her in return.
Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

Faith

“Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.”

George Balanchine (1904–1983) Georgian choreographer, dancer and ballet master (1904-1983)

Teachers

“When you insist someone submit to your will, it is accomplished most easily if you give them a small victory so they can retain their dignity while they do as you insist. ~ Kahlan Mother Confessor”

Terry Goodkind book Soul of the Fire

Source: Soul of the Fire

Victory

“I’ve always felt that a lot of modern art is a con, and that the most successful painters are often better salesmen and promoters than they are artists.”

Donald J. Trump book Trump: The Art of the Deal

Source: Trump: The Art of the Deal

Art, Success

“A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Source: Walden, or Life in the Woods

Beauty

“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

My Religion / Light in My Darkness, Ch 6 (1927)
Context: Self-culture has been loudly and boastfully proclaimed as sufficient for all our ideals of perfection. But if we listen to the best men and women everywhere … they will say that science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.

Science, Evil

“I prefer to spend time with you. You’re the most interesting person I know.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Captivated by You

Time, Personality

“For most of us the problem isn’t that we aim too high and fail - it’s just the opposite - we aim too low and succeed.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Problem, Motivational

“Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

“The most fundamental thing about a person is desire. It defines them. Tell me what a person wants, truly wants, and I'll tell you who they are, and how to persuade them.”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

Source: Lexicon

Personality

“Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

"Stairway to Heaven," Thinking in Pictures (1995), p. 202.
Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
Context: Most people don't realize that the slaughter plant is much gentler than nature. Animals in the wild die from starvation, predators, or exposure. If I had a choice, I would rather go through a slaughter system than have my guts ripped out by coyotes or lions while I was still conscious. Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die.

Death, People, Birth, Nature

“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend